


From the Private Writings of Essa Trevelyan

by thesecondseal



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-23 00:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3748258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles. Snippets of fluff or angst from the first person point of view of Essa Trevelyan. These are already posted within Acts of Reclamation between chapters or books in proper chronological order within the larger work, but I hope to gather all the first person pieces here as well so that they can be read on their own. If you have read the longer fic, some of these may still be new to you as there are #kissprompts mixed in as well. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Champion of the Just

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before she fully wakes from the injuries received fighting Corypheus at Haven, Essa chooses her purpose.

They didn’t realize I was awake the first time. I could hardly have held up my head, much less engaged in conversation so I didn’t mind lying on my cot, taking stock of how many ways I hadn’t died. My ribs were sore. I knew from experience that broken bones could be mended, but that they would be weak and sore for weeks afterward. I wasn’t especially looking forward to those weeks, though I was glad to have them. That I could draw in a long, steady inhale without coughing blood back out on its exit meant that they’d repaired the punctured lung. That one had scared me as few things ever had.

I didn’t mind facing my own mortality. Dying might not be something I charged toward eagerly–despite Cullen’s and Fin’s accusations to the contrary–but I wasn’t exactly afraid of it. Still, a slow agonizing suffocation was not high up on my list of ways to go. And neither was drowning in my own blood.

My arms hurt. I didn’t even bother trying to turn my head. My neck felt tight, as if the muscles had no plans for mobility in the near future. I let them rest, wary of their refusal, and worked my awareness down to the throbbing bruises on my back, the wrenched knee, the exhausted muscles in my calves. 

At least my feet didn’t hurt, I realized with wry humor.

I listened with closed eyes to the soft murmurs around me. I picked out Solas’s voice first, then Mother Giselle’s quiet strength answering his concern. It seemed odd to me that he would need such reassurance. I must have looked even worse than I felt when Cullen found me.

The noise of camp was a bittersweet comfort. So many sounds crowded together, scrambling around, atop one another. Building, mending, weapons being cleaned and sharpened. Food being passed from meager stores.There was anger and fear and panic. I heard their shadows riding high on tired voices, but there was hope too. A balm that clung to reason.

Josie’s voice reached me first, high and clear, a call to reason pulling taut the melody of her accent.  They shouted over her, but I caught each voice, held the sound like precious water and named its owner. Shaping beloved, infuriating faces against my eyelids.

Cassandra’s resolution was a force, but anger shook her, made her falter. Josie clung desperately to diplomacy. She knew that only a cool head had any chance of prevailing. She was right, but they weren’t ready to hear her. Leliana’s frustration was palpable. The price I thought, of reluctantly holding such high ideals. She needed quiet, and a glass of wine. No one had thought to make certain she took time for the prayers she needed.

I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t know how many we had lost at Haven.  I knew they did, and that they felt that number as keenly as I would once I had the strength and courage to ask for it.

A deeper note cut into their bickering, low and strident. I mocked myself when I felt my heart turn over at the sound. Cullen’s voice was rough, tired. I knew without being told that he had worn himself nearly through in caring for those whom I had entrusted to him. I had to wake up soon, I thought. Take some of that burden from him.

They needed me I realized. Not the Herald, but me. The half-feral warrior mage who knew only how to care for the four-legged folk. I smiled to myself. I should have seen it before, I thought. Varric had started giving me their totems. The nightingale, the lion. Cassandra was every fierceness of a mother bear or a mabari—I would always feel a partial fondness for those. Josie had long reminded me of Ingrid, the fine Orlesian Courser my father had once given me. Ingrid had not liked angry voices, but her love of order was never to be confused with a fear of conflict. Josie would make peace with deft movement and a reasonable tongue, but she was not one to be cornered.

They tried so hard. Covering teeth and sheathing claws, ignoring their own wounds to put the needs of their pack, their herd, their people first. The snarls and growls were pain behind the worry, but they would do what they must for those who relied upon them. 

As I drifted back to exhausted sleep, stars spun across the backs of my eyelids. I could their outlines clearly, bright lines of light defining treasured patterns. I knew then what I’d been saved for.

_Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and wicked and do not falter. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just._

Who else to care for the caregivers? To protect the protectors? Who else to guard the guardians? Who else to stand between them and the darkness but one who walked so easily in shadow?


	2. Impossible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Essa's first winter with the Inquisition, once she has realized the depth of her feelings for Cullen. From the Hinterlands. Essa. Varric. Friendship.

“That’s it,” I affirmed flatly, watching as Varric read the last page of my tragic tale. “The first twenty years of my life in six entertaining chapters.”

Minus Hope anyway. Unless my life changed dramatically—again—my daughter was a secret that I would take to the pyre. In ten years, even the Fade had not teased her from my heart.

“It’s a shame I can’t publish this,” Varric mused appreciatively, shifting the papers neatly together. “You’re a fair wordsmith, kid.”

I grumbled at him, but I took the compliment and hoarded it. We had camped early that evening. There was only so much slogging through the muck we could do in a day and we’d stumbled on a better than usual site for our camp. The cave wasn’t deep, but it was drier than most spots. We had built our fire just outside the overhang, and while Solas and Blackwall gathered firewood for the night, Varric and I got our meal started.

“You were right,” I informed him, stirring a pot of stew that smelled considerably better than my last. “It went more smoothly once I wrote it like it was someone else’s story.”

He nodded. “I’m not going to change anything,” he decided. “I’ll give everyone and everywhere appropriate names and copy it into my hand, but…”

Varric shook his head. “This is a gift,” he declared softly. “Your life laid bare. I thank you for trusting me with it, but are you sure you want to give it to—“

He almost said ‘Curly’ but something in my eyes seemed to stop him. He glanced away from me, staring into the fire as if the flames held answers. I could have told him they didn’t.

“To anyone else?” he finally concluded.

I chuckled, more to set him at ease than because I found any real humor in the situation. I was getting better at managing my beloved two-leggeds. I still found horses easier.

“I know.” I smiled without my teeth. “I can hear Leliana’s lecture from here. State secrets and all that.”

Not that we had a state. Not that it would be particularly prudent to try to form one between two the largest political powers in Thedas. Politics, I thought forcing myself not to shudder. Varric would know it wasn’t from the cold and the last thing I wanted to do was talk about how the leader of the Inquisition bore politics a reckless and all-consuming malice.

“That’s why you’re writing it as a story and changing all the names,” I reminded him.

“You really think he needs all of this?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe I’m the one who needs him to have all of it.”

“It’s risky,” Varric cautioned. Even with the names changed, the story was distinctive. A warrior made mage so late in life? I was, as far as anyone knew, the only one. “But if it ever sees light, I’ll claim it was in poor taste to base such a tragic tale on the life of Andraste’s Herald.”

“Thanks, Varric. I wouldn’t ask, but…I don’t know. I think it’s important.”

I didn’t want to think about why. My story was, at least, unlikely to be intercepted. Scout Harding had promised to deliver it to Cullen herself. With the passes frozen, travel to and from Skyhold was ill-advised, but not completely impossible, especially for a small, intrepid number of Leliana’s best. They still made occasional treks, involving ropes and spikes and a climb that made my stomach drop. I’d be increasing their hazard pay from my own coffers if Josie couldn’t find it in our funds. Not that they were making the trips on account of my personal correspondence, no that was just in addition to the tri-weekly reports my advisors insisted I make. Great detailed annoyances that couldn’t be attached to a crow’s leg.

“You get a letter back yet?”

“Bird flew into the forward camp just ahead of us,” I replied.

My first letter to Cullen had been little more than an earnest apology for my last night at Skyhold. I had mishandled his feelings and my own, and we had both been scraped tender and bruised like the morning after a storm. I had given myself the journey into the Hinterlands to gather my thoughts, and after a hot meal and long bath back at Master Dennet’s farm, I had carefully penned my contrition.

_I wish I could beg your forgiveness, Cullen, but I allowed my longing for absolution to rule me once and it nearly ruined me. I will not welcome it back. I am sorry though._

But I hadn’t been able to tell him what for.

Cullen’s first letter had been careful and terse a reply. If not for his request that I write him as often as I wanted, I might have stopped my impulsive correspondence.

_It is bitterly cold here, and there is a restlessness that seems to weigh upon the very stones of Skyhold. We all look anxiously toward spring and your return. Until then, I remain, Cullen._

I had read the last lines of his letter so many times that I no longer needed to, searching for meaning both hidden and direct. Had he agonized so over my words? I had a difficult time imagining Cullen brooding with the same devotion.

We had been in Crestwood for a week now, cleaning out the undead helping the locals while we searched for Hawke’s warden friend. The green and the wet were still cold, but not enough to keep the mud from caking our boots and sticking to everything. After the five weeks we had spent first in the Hinterlands, I was feeling spoiled and churlish. The terrain had not often bogged down around me there. Everything in Crestwood took twice as long as it should have and I was surly. When I wasn’t killing things, I was scowling into the space above Geri’s withers. I had yet to reply to Cullen’s letter for fear that my mood would be read too easily.

“Still with me, Mirabelle?”

Varric waved one hand in front of my vacant stare, bringing me back from my thoughts. I hastily stirred the stew, scraping the bottom and sides carefully.

“I’m sorry, I was—“

“We’ve gotten used to it.” He waved off my apology. He lifted the parchment that he was still holding. “You’re sure about this?”

Was I? Of course not, and his asking me repeatedly wasn’t helping my trepidation. I sighed and would have jolted to my feet to pace but for Varric’s hand on my arm. Such a simple touch, one that so many took for granted. A bridge across the short distance between friends and familiar, and yet it had earned Cullen the edge of his own blade. I stared down at Varric’s hand. His grip was steady. Neither he nor Bull had ever flinched from me. Of course Bull had nearly broken my wrist. Varric just threatened to break my heart with the faith I saw behind the flames reflected in his eyes.

“You didn’t see his face that night,” I insisted quietly, sinking back onto my haunches. “Have you ever had someone look at you in complete disgust? At first it’s like you become something unrecognizable to them, but then they see you anew. You can watch it dawn in their eyes, and suddenly you are worse than an unknown. I may as well have been an abomination.”

Varric patted my arm in comfort. “I think you’re taking this whole thing a little harder than you should, kid. If Curly had thought you were an abomination, he’d have skewered you, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

I managed a smile that was only a little tight round the edges. Varric opened his mouth to speak, and I knew a dozen defenses for Cullen that either of us might make.

“I knew it was going to be bad,” I confided, shaking my head to stop his words. “When I finally told him, I knew it would break whatever trust had grown between us. And I understand. He has suffered more than most. That he survived Kinloch Hold is a bitter mercy. One for which I am selfishly grateful. But I can be sympathetic, Varric, I can be understanding, and I can still want more for myself.”

Varric squeezed my arm before pulling away. His elbows found his knees and he leaned forward, staring into the campfire. He took the spoon from me and stirred our dinner absently.

“Mirabelle, most of us go our whole lives hiding the worst of ourselves and being thankful for the ones who love us without ever asking what we hide.” He sighed heavily and for all my life experience, I felt painfully young beside Varric. “Most of us who love do so without wanting those answers.”

“But that’s not real!” I sputtered.

He chuckled sadly. “Most would rather have the possible.”

“You’re saying that real love is impossible?” Everything in me rebelled at the notion.

“Most of the time, kid. Why do you think people love a good story? Because the brave and the true and the heroic burn too brightly to last. Folks cling to their legacy, light their own hearths with the embers.”

I stood again and this time Varric didn’t stop me.

“Send Cullen the story,” I ordered tersely. “Whatever he feels for me, it will be the truth.”

I stomped into the darkness, the ground squelching loudly in protest beneath my temper.


	3. Wishes We Dare Not Make

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and Essa exchange letters during their first winter apart. Essa fears his feelings might have changed as her return to Skyhold draws near, and resigns herself to giving up the hope of him.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about your problem, boss.”

It was early morning. Too early for anyone else to be awake; I was surprised when Bull joined me. We had met up with him and the Chargers outside of Haven, and were aiding in whatever rebuilding and relief efforts we could while we waited for spring to thaw the mountain pass. I crouched before the dying fire, one hand on the side of the heavy iron pot, reheating last night’s stew for our breakfast.

“Which problem is that?” I asked.

The camp was still quiet; I could hear a harmony of snores from the circle of tents. The horses moved gently amid their pickets, soft sighs and familiar rustles. Geri snorted once to let me know he was awake.

“The sex thing.”

 _The sex thing._ I almost laughed at his phrasing. The Qunari were admirably practical about sex; I had found in Bull a confidant without judgement or restraint and with far more opinions than I had. I knew he was a problem solver, but I didn’t expect him to be quite so determined to help me with mine. Last night, I’d told him that I was content with celibacy. It was the only wise recourse with cravings as dangerous as mine. He hadn’t looked pleased, but he had dropped the conversation. It looked like we were back to it. And before I had my tea.

“I think you’re going about this all wrong,” he informed me.

I did laugh then. “Well, of course _you_ do.”

He grinned easily, taking no offense where none was intended.  He crouched down beside me.

“You fear your desires,” his voice pitched low. “And you give them too much power over you.”

I shook my head, unable to speak. I knew the dangers of fear. Once, years ago, I had considered a different path for dealing with mine, but I hadn’t been able to go through with it and later I had been glad.

“There is nothing wrong with what you want,” Bull told me earnestly.

“Maybe not for someone else,” I argued, doubt creeping where doubt should never have gone. “But my desires incinerate people.”

Because a truth that important bore repeating.

“No,” Bull compelled with heavy quiet.

Long taut moments passed in the way of the fire. I glanced down at the pot and yanked my hand away from  glowing iron. “Bull—“

“Essa.”

He did a reasonable mimic of my tone. I stared stonily into the waning darkness.

“Your body’s reaction to your desires incinerated someone.”

I turned my face from him, hoped he couldn’t see the turmoil that threatened to choke me.

“Look at me,” he ordered softly.

I wanted to deny him; I knew he would wait as long as was needed for me to meet his gaze. I turned back to him, trying to hide in the pre-dawn shadows, but he still saw whatever it was he was looking for.

“Your desires don’t have a casualty list.”

Each syllable felt like a body blow. I jerked my chin in instinctive denial, and stared at him, shocked mute.

“I’ve watched you for the better part of a year now,” Bull said easily, as if he weren’t knocking my foundation from beneath me. “You still wince at even the most casual touch. For some of us, you try to check the recoil, but in all that time, there have been only two people whose hands you don’t flinch from. Fin.”

He tone suggested Fin didn’t count. “And Cullen.”

I glared at him, but Bull kept right on talking. “You don’t reach out either, you know. Not like most people. Not unless it’s a horse, or barn cat. You do alright with children, but we don’t see many of those.”

I stirred the stew, scraping the wooden spoon along the too hot edge to make sure it wasn’t sticking.

“Are you going to make a point sometime soon, Bull?” I asked waspishly.

“I used to think you just didn’t like being touched,” he said, passing me an empty bowl. “Figured it was something in your nature or your past, didn’t make much difference to me, but that last night in Skyhold—“

“When I was too drunk to stand?” I interjected.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And too drunk to yank your hand back for fear of burning someone every time you touched them.”

“I do not!” I gasped at the accusation. I filled his bowl and passed it back to him with more force than needed. “I actually don’t like touching people.”

“I used to think that about you too.” He leaned back, crossed his feet at the ankles, and stirred his stew around so that it would cool. “Thought you just weren’t the affectionate sort. No harm if that had been the case.”

He shook his head at me. “But you’re a fierce softy, Trevelyan. You love like a mabari once you’ve chosen someone.”

I was fairly certain that I was insulted.

“You ever loved so many people as you do right now?” Bull asked.

It was a ludicrous question; I crossed my arms over my chest and sank back on my heels, away from the fire. Away from him. The retreat pulled me immediately from the defensive.

“You’re right,” I admitted softly, staring into the pale ashes before me. “Until I found myself in Haven, I couldn’t have filled my hands counting the two-leggeds I have loved.”

I counted them now. My father, my sister, Fin, Diar, Prin, Erik, and Hope. Aubreg, I thought. Ours had not been an easy love, but it was there and I had let it shape me.

“And now?”

I couldn’t stop my sheepish grin. Now I was surrounded by people I loved. Most of whom I believed loved me in return. There were a few I was less certain about, but I didn’t mind.  I was still a political convenience after all, and besotted or not, I didn’t take myself for a complete fool.  Nor did I hold it against them. I could love without being loved in return. I dragged my legs up before me wrapped my arms around them for comfort.

“Now, I actually feel like I have a two-legged family,” I mumbled. “You and the Chargers…you’re a little bit of the home I lost.”

Bull reached out with one arm and grabbed me without warning, dragging me to his side and tucking me close in the shelter of one massive bicep before returning to his breakfast. His forearm banded across me just below my neck. I should have felt trapped.

“And look at you not tensing,” he teased, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “Continue.”

I relaxed against him with an exasperated sigh. “Do you want me to name everyone?”

Bull laughed. “No, I think you get my point, and I remember most of the ones you shouted at in the tavern. You’re an affectionate creature, boss. You say your childhood wasn’t lacking and I won’t argue that point, but Ostwick?”

He didn’t tell me what I already knew, that nearly a decade in the tower had taught me that a person’s touch preceded either violence or the passionless promise of my end. Since Diar’s death, I had given my touch only with reluctance.

“So now what?” I asked, drawing myself from my memories with a deep breath.

Bull’s arm squeezed gently.

“Now we teach you to trust yourself. I’m not saying I’m going to get you between the sheets with anyone anytime soon, but maybe the next time you leave Skyhold you can give Cullen a proper kiss goodbye. I saw that pathetic peck you planted on his cheek,” Bull added knowingly.

”You saw nothing,” I said, driving my elbow into his ribs hard enough to elicit a grunt. “A year’s madness that I am thankfully over.”

“Are you really?” Bull asked.

Over Cullen? I thought. No. I wasn’t over Cullen. Despite months of exchanging letters that at least seemed to indicate he wasn’t considering having me made tranquil, I still wasn’t sure what I would find when I returned to Skyhold. I would never forget the betrayal in his eyes when I confessed my demons, and though I couldn’t think of a better time to have told him, I couldn’t absolve myself guilt for not having told him sooner.

No, I wasn’t over Cullen. I wasn’t over the way his breath felt on my neck or the cold defiance in his tawny eyes as he held me against him. Our bodies aligned too perfectly, and months later I was still too easily distracted by the recollection.

“Yes,” I sighed, answering Bull and myself. “I am.”

I would no longer allow myself to pine over a wish I had never had the courage to make.

 


	4. Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This follows Letter of Intent Cullen gave Essa during her convalescence after Smoke's death. Wherein Cullen states as clearly as he can his feelings for Essa. I thought I might have a mutiny on my hands if I didn't write the letter. There's some post letter plot here too, and Essa and Cullen learn a bit more about how capable they are for handling one another's histories.

_Essa_. My name was formed of bold curves and graceful loops, bold and elegant in ways that my scrawling signature would never be. The tip of my finger hovered, tracing the air above each letter. The ink was long dried, but I feared that I would smudge them with a careless touch. The words that followed were not nearly as fanciful as my name, but as I tried to read _Fin has asked me of my intentions…_ I kept coming back to that single word at the top of the page.  My fingers skimmed closer—gathering courage or losing patience—I ran my fingertip along the upper rise of the _E,_ feeling the deep indentations made by a smooth nib. I wondered just how many times Cullen had traced those letters, black limning black until the darkness stood brightly upon the page. I thought of how his lips wrapped around those same two syllables, curving with a smile or lifting with a curse, but always he spoke as if he had found some strange, relentless certainty.

_I wish that I knew what answer to give him, but whatever words I have, they are first for you._

I glanced up at the date. There had been another—today’s in fact—written on the front of the folded parchment just below the seal, along with a hastily jotted _nothing has changed_.  But the letter had been written in late winter, not long before my return to Skyhold, and well after so many letters had flown back and forth across Ferelden bearing stories we had not been ready to share face to face.

 _I cannot make you promises, and if I were so foolish, I do not believe that you would accept them._ Something had been crossed out. _I have written this out twice and it’s still impossible to say with any grace._ I smiled, I could almost hear Cullen’s frustration. _Promises are for those with futures. I don’t know what the future holds. For either of us. I still struggle to free myself from my past. Each day is only today. One after the other without thought for the next beyond what a time means to a moving army. For myself, there is only ever today._

_Today there is the hope of spring in Skyhold. Today, for the moment, I am content with who I am, and that is a rare and precious feeling. Today I miss you , and while I still do not know what I would say to Fin, were you here I would simply say_

_Today is yours. As am I._

_Cullen_

The parchment rattled in my grasp, and I dropped the letter to the bed, hands shaking too hard to hold on without doing damage. My heart was pounding, and hope fought lingering uncertainty, choking my breath to a desperate gasp around their battle. I stumbled to my feet, knee catching in the long skirt of my robe in my haste. The near fall drew me up, forced my body to wait for my mind to join the march. I tied the belt of my robe more tightly, pulled the long hem up and tucked it with some small measure of the artfulness that Dorian had taught me. I thought better of leaving the letter where it was and folded it as carefully as I could before sliding it into the deep pocket of my robe.

I took a slow breath that did nothing to calm me, spared a glance for neither my appearance, nor the time. Sera had sad to read the letter, then go to him.

I never followed an order so gladly in my life.

*

He was asleep, deep and dreamless, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop watching him. Couldn’t stop tracing the line of his jaw, the soft curve of lips that were—for the moment—neither smirking nor sneering. He didn’t seem real like this, lines smoothed by hard-won rest. He should have looked younger, but instead he looked like a tomb sculpture, vitality trapped in curves of marble. His face was surely the finest of the Maker’s art, but it twisted something broken in me to see it locked in cold repose.

I was in love with him, I realized, and I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry to herald my utter forsaking of all reason. It was far too soon to speak of love. Wasn’t it?

“Essa?”

I took the final two steps to the edge of his bed before I realized my error. Cullen wasn’t awake, and I hadn’t made nearly enough noise with my bare feet. My breath was still trapped behind the soft sigh of my name in his dreams. I took a stutter step back and called to him.

He moved from sleep to violence faster than I could have ever hoped to, a whisper of death beneath the clouded moonlight, and my heart broke, because whatever nightmare he had woken into was my fault, my own stupid carelessness.

“Cullen, it’s me.”

I wasn’t far enough away to attempt to run—not that I would have been anyway, how had I not known how fast the man was? I wasn’t surprised when his hands closed on my arms, or when I was dragged beneath the hard press of his body. I expected a knife to my throat, or forearm hard against my windpipe. They were my preferred greetings for those foolish or ignorant enough to wake me from my nature, though I didn’t have the body mass to go straight for pinning.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, voice rough with memories.

I wondered if they were the nightmares he had already shared with me or something new. Something that wore my face and pulled my name into the darkest watches of the night.

“Being stupid,” I admitted, chest aching with my own foolishness and other things I wouldn’t name. “Cullen, I’m sorry.”

He pinned one of my hands between us to free his outside hand. I lay still, listening as he fumbled to light the candle beside his bed. I smiled a little when he leaned farther over, his position more precarious as he released my other hand in order to have both of his free. When the flame caught, Cullen settled back over me. The fire reached for me greedily and I watched it burn bright and golden in the tawny depths of Cullen’s eyes.

“This is not how I pictured getting you into my bed.”

His voice rolled through me, traveling from his chest and into mine with the certainty of stone, slow and unyielding. I blinked. Once. Twice. Waited for him to get angry with me, to laugh at me, to take back the words or declare them an impulsive quip. Instead he was calmer than I was, and he watched me too closely.

“You’ve…”

But I couldn’t bring myself to finish the brazen query, couldn’t get my feet back under me, because all I could think about was how perfectly our body’s fit, negative and positives with no room for space or contrast. I licked my lips nervously and watched him track the movement with a gleam that too closely mirrored the wildness he had once reproved in my eyes.

“I have,” he admitted. Darkly. Richly.

His pupils were too big, the press of his chest to mine was too much, and the heat that grew between us threatened to devour precious air. He leaned up enough to release my hands from the cage of us, but instead of scrambling for leverage or pushing him away, the traitorous things hovered over the tightly strung muscles in his arms. I lifted my lips for the promise of destruction, repeated every rationalization I could think of for why this wasn’t the worst idea I’d had lately.

Cullen’s lips ghosted over mine. I could almost taste the warmth of him.

“You’re cold.” He rolled away from me and I watched him teeter on the edge of his dream. “Why do you feel cold?”

I scrambled to my knees on the bed, but he had already gained his feet. I had a dozen reasons—not the least of which was that the man’s hands were warm for the first time since I’d met him—but I didn’t have time to articulate any of them. He was already reaching for his sword. I saw the confusion cloud his eyes and my breath shredded, memory’s claws all the sharper as I watched them tear into him.

“Cullen.” I knew what it was to be trapped in a waking nightmare that felt all too real.

“Do not speak to me.”

His words were colder than I was. Another step back and he would have a sword in his hand. I would be left with only my dagger or my magic to defend myself and I knew that we would both end up with scars before that was over.

I sighed. “I’m sorry for this,” I said.

Then I grabbed the tankard by the bed and threw its contents at his face.


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essa returns from the Hinterlands with a new warhorse, some dragon teeth, and a whole bunch of butterflies. Cullen and Essa's second kiss. Occurs late in Convalescence.

We arrived late to Skyhold, just behind a heavy summer storm. So late, in fact, the night watch didn’t sound an alarm, they simply rode out to meet us on the bridge. The guards put their weapons away quickly enough, exchanging swords for smiles of welcome and head shakes that they thought I couldn’t see.

It had been crazy, Bull said, to even think of riding straight through the night, but he had been just as anxious to get back as I was, and if he gave me too much teasing about Cullen, he knew I’d tell the others why.

Still, once we were home, they took pity on me. Saying nothing of my barely contained impatience, the boys help me rub down and tend to the horses instead of relying on my usual habit of tending to all four myself. It had been a long week, and I was giddy, strung out from the road and too many yearnings.

When both Geri and my new brute of a warhorse were tucked comfortably in their stalls, I all but threw myself out of my filthy clothes and into the nearest water trough.

Cassandra muttered something that sounded like “goodnight.” She cast one last disapproving glance at the new horse. Cacique glared back at her and I shook my head. 

“You’re too much alike,” I snickered and not for the first time since we picked up the monster.

There was laughter as the Iron Bull and Varric wished me a good night and headed out. Bull called some teasing comment about my ass over his shoulder. I added another figure to his standing tab and he laughed.They didn’t realize how much I reeked–they didn’t smell any better–but there was no way I was returning to Cullen without at least the first two layers of dirt gone.

“My lady.”

The soap that hit the water in front of me contradicted the deferential words with a grand splash of water into my face. I swore cheerfully at Blackwall as I searched for the bar and heated the water with a gentle expelling of magic.

“I’m sorry we woke you,” I apologized. “But—“

I found the soap with a triumphant “ha!”

“I can’t say I’m not a little glad,” I admitted. “I don’t think water was going to be enough this time.”

Blackwall chuckled, eyes politely averted from my impromptu bath.  They had all gotten used to me. Months in the field meant that we adjusted to one another or we killed each other. I think it helped them to wave most of my idiosyncrasies off as being touched by Andraste. Though the Chantry couldn’t possibly appreciate my lack of modesty being blamed on the Maker and his Bride.

“Rough trip?” he asked.

We were days later than we’d planned, and though we had sent word, I imagined no few were mad at me. I heard a rustle of cloth and then a clean rag smacked me in the face.

“Nah,” I replied. “Nothing too terrible, but I broke down and took Bull to kill that Fereldan Frostback. He kept insisting he needed teeth or something.”

I shrugged. “It was messy. By the time it was over, I was just ready to be home.”

Home. Blackwall was the only one I’d spoken to in a week who didn’t fill in the rest for me with overly verbose clarifications. 

“There’s a towel here,” he said instead. “And clothes that Ambassador Montilyet brought down after the last time you decided you’d rather bathe in the barn than in ‘an appropriate tub’.”

I grinned. “Remind me to buy Josie some chocolates the next time we’re in Val Royeaux.”

“I will try to remember.”

I ducked my head beneath the water then worked a heavy lather into it with the soap. It smelled like lemon balm and mint, a rarely advertised favorite of mine.

“Did she bring the soap down too?”

“Aye, and a comb, and a small bottle of oil for your hair. Said to tell you that even good soap will strip it to straw.”

“I’ll take her flowers in the morning,” I declared with a laugh. “The crystal grace should be blooming in the garden.”

“Do that,” he agreed.

I heard the unmistakable sound of an empty bucket being turned over.

“If there’s nothing else you need, I’ll leave your things here, my lady. Don’t worry about the trough. I’ll empty it in the morning.”

“Thank you, Blackwall.”

I didn’t know what I would do without him. Without all of them. I hoped that in time my sister would find something of what I had among them.

“It’s good to have you home,” he told me earnestly. “Skyhold’s not quite the same without you. Too bloody quiet.”

It didn’t take much longer for me to get off what I hoped was most of the dirt. I climbed out of the trough, grabbed an extra bucket from a peg by the door and dumped the water over my head in an attempt to rinse whatever might have been remained. I shivered and told myself it was the sudden cold.

I hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks. We had left for the Hinterlands the day after that first—and second—kiss. I felt like a bumbling fool. I should have sent a note back or something. Right? Some small token or mention of my affection. Isn’t that what people did?

Bah, I was terrible at figuring out what people did.

I dried off quickly, wrapped my wet hair in the towel and reached for the pile of…

Wait. This wasn’t clothes. This was cloth. I lifted the linen and stared at it. This was one ridiculously thin excuse for what? A dress? A gown?

I gave the thing a hesitant shake and watched a piece of parchment flutter to the ground.

Oh, Josie, I thought. You will not be getting flowers. I picked up the small square of parchment and held it up to one of the lamps. I read the words with a groan.

_My dear Inquisitor,_

_Perhaps next time you will reconsider bathing in the barnyard rather than the very nice, very expensive tub that has been furnished for your quarters. Enjoy your evening._

_J_

I couldn’t help laughing. If our fair ambassador thought she could embarrass me with fashion that surely came from Orlais’s boudoirs, she was sadly mistaken. As I tugged the garment over my head, I considered wearing it to the morning meeting.

One of my vices was linen, and as the fabric slid down my body, I forgave it for Josie’s meddling. I had always loved well-washed linen, and the soft, square-necked gown smelled faintly of lavender and strongly of sunshine. So what if it was probably transparent during the day? I decided. Or if there was no way to keep the neckline on both shoulders. It was night now, and what sliver of moon hung in the sky hid behind clouds. The skirt hit the top of my feet, cool folds hanging with such pleasant weight that I spun in a little circle, watching the pale fabric bell out around me.  

I combed my hair, and used magic to dry it. I was getting more comfortable with the fire that bloomed beneath my skin and small tasks such as these made me less distrustful of my power. I had Cullen to thank for that too. Whether he realized it or not, he had shown me that my connection to the Fade was about of more than destruction.

I bundled up my armor, firmly pushing away any worries of what Cullen might think of my ridiculous gown. I tucked my gear in front of Geri’s stall for morning retrieval. I had been a responsible Inquisitor for about as long as I could stand. I tugged on the pair of slippers that Josie included. At least they were leather, I thought. They had a decent heal and soles hard enough to carry me across the castle grounds.

The only thing that kept me from running across the yard was knowing without question that I would have raised an alarm and had a few dozen templars racing to my side. Hardly the entrance I was hoping to make. I nodded and called a quiet hello to the night watch, giggling to myself that they didn’t seem remotely surprised by my attire. We were all, I thought again, getting used to one another.

I lifted my skirts to begin my climb up to Cullen’s tower. I was already warming to the gown more than I wanted to admit. I liked the weight, the perfect and simple drape. I counted the steps as I made my way up, forcing more restraint than I thought I had not to skip the last few.

I knocked politely. I didn’t think he was asleep yet, but the hour was late after all. When I received no answer I paced across the battlements, skirt snapping in agitation. I came to my senses when the wind whipped my gown against my legs and reminded me that I was determined  _not_  to be a heroine in some literary romance.

I let myself into his office long enough to determine that Cullen was neither there, nor in the upstairs loft. I caught one of the guards as I left.

“He’s probably at prayers, Inquisitor. Likes the quiet this late.”

Of course he did. There was still so much to learn about each other.

I headed for the garden, content to wander among the herbs and flowers. It was a warm night, at least by Skyhold’s standards, perfect for sleeping outside. I had a blanket stashed in a chest on the colonnade. Had to keep it hidden from Josie, she still didn’t like me sleeping outside. I detoured just long enough to retrieve the well-worn quilt. 

My favorite sleeping spot was nestled amid the water barrels where we grew black lotus and dawn lotus, not far from a stand of prophet’s laurel. I spread the blanket on the ground.

“Essa?”

There was something off in Cullen’s voice. I hadn’t heard the chapel door open, but there he stood, just inside the colonnade. I smiled at him, offered him a little wave across the garden. When he didn’t move, when his feet clung to stone and his face remained in the shadows, I got nervous.

“Good evening,” I ventured, more hesitant that I’d ever been in my life. “It’s a fine night.”

Cullen crossed the garden in a rush. I took two steps toward him, then stumbled to a halt. His eyes traveled over me roughly and I lifted my hand to my throat just like one of those blighted damsels I insisted I couldn’t be. When he reached me, he caught me by my elbows and I gasped.

“Maker’s breath, woman,” his words tumbled out in a rush. “You nearly scared me to death. What are you wearing? I thought you were a ghost.”

I opened my mouth to answer him, but his lips stole all words from mine. His hands gentled, running supple leather across the prickling skin of my arms before framing my face and gathering me close. He didn’t touch me as if I were the fragile, fainting thing I suddenly felt like. No. Cullen held me as if I were the only solid truth in the world.

I leaned into him, kissed him back until we were both breathless. If I was going disgrace myself with a swoon, he was going to suffer the same embarrassment.

“I was going to make you kiss me next,” he murmured against my jaw.

I laughed softly, fingers tunneling into his hair.

“I had every intention,” I assured him.

I pressed kisses on his cheekbones, down the side of his neck. 

“I suppose I should thank Josie for the addition to my wardrobe.”

“Josie,” he said as if that answered all possible questions about my unusual attire. “Yes, I suppose we should.”

He grinned. Dropped another long, slow kiss upon my lips. “She left it at the stable for you.”

I laughed again. “Well she didn’t talk me into wearing it for courting.”

My comment was rewarded with a broad grin.

“And are you courting me, Essa Trevelyan?”

I glared up at him and he spared me the answering. 

“Or would you rather be wooed, Inquisitor? I’ve been considering my approach.”

I punched him lightly and he came back to my lips with a single-minded devotion that had my knees wobbling. I clung to his shoulders and swore at him until his laughter spilled into me between the soft lingerings of his mouth.

“I like your dress,” he said, placing a kiss on my bare shoulder.

“You can’t possibly,” I retorted, making him laugh more.

“I am glad to have you home.” 

Cullen smiled and caught my hand in his, lifting it to his lips.

“And I am glad to be home.”


	6. Shadow Puppets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #fluff

“Are you  _certain_  that’s a rabbit?” Cullen asked, laughter filling his voice.

He placed a trail of kisses along the curving scar that ran across my floating ribs. I didn’t know what it did to a body to lose those bones, but I’d nearly found out. He was still unhappy about it, but he was terrible at punishing me for my carelessness. 

“It is,” I insisted. “Look! There are the ears.”

My lips hurt from grinning. I could have sworn we had been laughing for hours. I stared at my right hand, carefully moving my fingers into a slight variation of its initial position. I waggled my fingers, watched as the shape of the shadow on the wall changed.

“Well, it’s terrible,” he pronounced, settling again with his head on my stomach. 

He caught my not so rabbit-shaped hand in his and uncrimped my fingers, stretching them out and placing small, light kisses on the tip of each. He turned my palm to his face, and nuzzled my hand before pressing a much more intimate kiss at its center. The light of the anchor wavered against the walls of his loft. My body wound tight and my left hand clenched against the surge he seemed to so easily call within me.

“Uh-uh,” he whispered against my skin. “Get the light back up there. I’ll show you the proper way to make a shadow rabbit.”

I opened my left hand and angled it carefully to throw bright emerald light against the stones. He placed one last kiss on my right before letting go. I watched a much more life-like looking rabbit take shape on the wall.

“Hey, no fair,” I complained. “That takes two hands.”

I waved the anchor a little as a reminder. “I can only use one.”

“Well then, maybe you should stick with simple shapes,” he recommended so seriously that I dared hope he was going to suggest something useful. “Like a rock, or a turtle.”

I popped him playfully on the back and we both laughed. He flew doves amid the varying shades of green and I tried to pay attention to how he did it. Hope would find the skill intriguing; I could pass it along through Fin. He was better able to sneak a visit to my daughter. I hadn’t seen her in…well long enough that I was glad she had a true mother who wasn’t me.

I stretched slowly, casting us closer into darkness as I closed my hand.

“I should get going,” I said, rubbing my legs against his and basking in the comfort of us. “You need to get some sleep.”

I was leaving in the morning, and it was over a week’s journey to the Storm Coast. I could doze while I rode. He, on the other hand, had far more work to do.

“Stay,” he murmured against my skin.

I ran my hand through his hair, playing lightly with the heavy curls.

“You need to sleep,” I repeated.

“Stay.”

We still hadn’t figured out who was the most obstinate. My breath caught as his arms wrapped around me and he snuggled close.

“Sleep here with me,” his voice had grown heavy. “There’s a huge hole in the ceiling, Es. You will be able to see the sky if you wake in the night.”

He knew, I realized. He knew that I didn’t sleep in the big bed or my fancy quarters.

“At least here, I won’t worry about you rolling off the damned balcony,” he mumbled sleepily.

I reached for my glove and pulled it on, granting us truer darkness.

“Fine,” I said, leaning to drop a kiss on top of his head. “But you have to know I’m not going to roll of the balcony. The rails are quite high.”

“Alright,” he agreed.

He pulled the sheet up over most of us. I watched in wonder as Cullen’s breathing evened out. We had never slept together. In many ways sex was an easier intimacy. I wasn’t fond of sleeping inside and Josie had been scandalized when I suggested moving one of the giant Fereldan canopied beds out into the garden. I would have slept in the stable had Blackwall not beaten me to claiming the space. As it was I spent most nights at Skyhold on my balcony.

“I love you,” I whispered, certain that he was asleep.

“I love you,” he answered, softy. “Even if you can’t make a decent shadow rabbit to save your life.”


	7. Rain on a Summerday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [I lost count of how many tropes I tried to not so subtly sneak in here. (there was a tumblr challenge) :) Maybe we should make it a word search game and y’all can tell me what you find. lol Anyway, fluff/smut/tropiest thing ever. Out of chronology one shot. Essa x Cullen. Essa's pov. 2700 words. NSFW. Huge shoutout to themightyzan for proofing this thing.]

Summerday was almost gone. The longest day had yielded wildly to twilight, the sky darkened by heavy clouds, swirling mist, and a thunderstorm that sent happy couples and celebrants scurrying for cover. Love and lust were as heady in the heavy air as the scents of rose and honeysuckle that wafted from the drenched garden. Lovers were tucked into alcoves, soft laughter and yearning sighs tangling with the music that had filled the keep since sunrise. I hadn’t realized we had so many musicians among us. The lilt of pipes wound through the coming dusk like dream music.

Fin sat on the steps that led into the main keep, a zither across his knees, plucking out a cheery tune with no regard for the weather.

“You’re going to drown,” I told him.

He simply grinned, fingers skipping a spritely tune across the strings to rebuffed my avowal.

When I woke this morning, I thought a traveling festival had descended on Skyhold, but the troops of musicians, comics, and actors were all familiar faces. The rain was chasing us all indoors, but Solas was confident the storm would pass for the night’s merriments.

Despite my “rustic charm,” Josephine had assured me that Skyhold had turned out revelry grand enough to rival the Winter Palace. She was probably still pouting that I had not let her dress me in sumptuous fashion. I had worried that our friendship would suffer for my staunch refusal to host a ball for whatever nobles Josie could talk into spending the holiday with us. Summerday was for Skyhold, I had told her. The men and women of our stronghold worked hard, day in and day out to keep the Inquisition running. They would have a day and night of joy and laughter. And as much of a day of rest on the morrow as we could manage. There was too much looming before us to not take the respite for every last maid and stablehand. She was lucky that I was allowing any outsiders within our walls.

I had checked my tea for poison for a week after our disagreement. Until Leliana laughed and promised me that if Josie ever had true cause to have me eliminated that she would slip the knife between my ribs herself, make it quick and clean. I thanked her. Always nice to have a spymaster I could trust.

“You should get out of the rain,” Cullen said, drawing me from my thoughts as he met me on the stairs.

I had been standing with my face turned up to the deluge. Like fowl too daft to know better, I marveled at the weather, losing precious breath to raindrops. Before I could reply, the heavy rainfall suddenly doubled and I heard Fin’s music stop, then the slap of his feet on the stone as he rushed for shelter.

“A little late for that,” I said smiling as Cullen stepped closer to hear me over the roar.

The rain afforded a strange sort of privacy, the water pouring down like noisy grey curtains, cutting us off from a fortress filled with people who really weren’t that interested in us anyway. For one fraught breath, I felt more alone with him than I ever had. There was little between us; he had exchanged his armor for more casual dress, the soft cotton tunic and breeches had a rakish cut, and the wide square collar of his fawn-colored shirt summoned images of warmer climates and high seas. It was unexpected.

And I had been staring at his collarbones all blighted day.

“I want you to know,” Cullen said, reaching slowly to catch my elbows with his hands. “That I am rather admirably refusing to mention that you are standing in the middle of Skyhold in a very wet, very transparent linen dress.”

His gaze fixed resolutely upon my face and I held back a laugh.

“If you hadn’t felt the need to tell me that,” I said, leaning toward him so that the heat from my body could take away some of the rain’s chill. “I might have given you credit for it.”

His fingers flexed against my bare arms, thumbs skidding across my wet skin to press gently against the inside of my elbows. Our pulses joined, pounding in tandem. I drew a slow breath in through my nose. Sought a measure of calm.

“I’ve been ogling,” I admitted with a grin. “Your clothes aren’t much better.”

His feet shifted, and I watched his neck flush, but pragmatism won the day and Cullen mostly ignored me.

“I would very much like to kiss you,” he said instead, surprising me. “Here in the rain, like one of Cassandra’s novels.”

We no longer asked permission for kisses. It was progress on both of our sides that we could be so easy with that affection. Still, this was a considerably more public display than hiding in a corner of the battlements and stealing kisses like two youths.

“That’s a pretty open declaration, Commander,” I warned. “You certain about that?”

He pretended to think about it, and my grin grew ever broader as he feigned an expression of solemn contemplation.

“Curly, if you don’t kiss her,” Varric’s voice was impatient, and close enough that we both startled.

Cullen and I peered through the rain at the darker grey silhouette ahead of us on the stairs.

“I swear,” Varric threatened. “That I will write that you did.”

Cullen chuckled. The sound reverberated between us, warming my chest and stealing my breath.

“If I’m going to take the blame…”

He leaned down, lips hovering cool and sweet over mine.

“Close your eyes, Varric!” I tried to call, but my order and my laughter were muffled by Cullen’s mouth.

I forgot about Varric. I forgot about a lot of things that I was supposed to remember as Cullen’s lips teased mine. Like keeping part of my mind clear and calm, like thinking cool, soothing thoughts. Caution fell away. There remained only the joining of our mouths, the sighs of breath, the slide of tongues, and the aching inches he remembered to keep between our bodies for both our sakes.

Go slowly, I reminded myself in the last rational corner of my mind.

Cullen was better about that than I was. His lips traveled in unhurried exploration, the only indication of the urgency that built between us was his grip on my arms and my tightly balled fists. He knew the danger—we both did—but there was a certain comfort in knowing that he wanted me just as much as I wanted him. My lips lingered, tasting honeyed wine and Cullen and rain.

“Al’right, kids, that’s enough.”

Varric’s drawl managed to grab my attention, but only because he was standing closer to us than before. Reluctantly Cullen and I drew apart.

“You two manage to make careful and proper look nothing like themselves,” Varric said with a sigh that didn’t quite hide his amusement. “Now get inside before no one needs my not inconsiderable imagination to picture the two of you naked.”

It was my turn to blush. Cullen released my arms and I folded them across my chest.

“I have towels,” I said as if it were the least inane statement I could make and not my ridiculous way of inviting him to my quarters.

“Towels would be good,” Cullen replied.

I heard Varric’s exasperated snort. Kissing we could handle, if he needed the muse, but we were both abysmal at flirting. I turned and ran inside without another word.  I didn’t look to see who was watching as I beat feet to my quarters, but when Josie called to Cullen, diverting him from following me, I wanted to stop and glare at her.

“Inquisitor,” she called as I ran by. “Your dress for the evening festivities is in your bathing chamber.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Ambassador Montilyet. When you’re through with the Commander, would you send him to me, please?”

I could feel her cringe at my lack of subtlety, but Cullen’s chuckle took away the sting.

“I’ll be along in a moment, Inquisitor.”

His voice was warm, and the familiar way he said my title made it into something of an endearment. Josie sighed at him, but I heard a laugh in the exhalation that she didn’t quite hide.

“Good,” I said, still too high on the day’s revelry to care about decorum.  Lately, I tried–I really did–but that restraint was not in my nature.

I continued to my rooms, clambering up the stairs in a slap of wet linen, and staunchly refusing to look into any reflective surfaces lest I see just how close to naked I actually was in my not-very-thick, too-pale dress. It wasn’t quite the whisper of fabric that was the first gown Josie had given me, but it wasn’t much better. I had no doubt that my breast band and smalls would be clearly visible through the wet fabric.

I had been asked to bless no fewer than seven marriages. Josie had heard “wedding!” and promptly begun planning bonding ceremonies fit for nobility. The couples—definitely not nobility—had taken her enthusiasm in a stride that humbled me. Skyhold’s people loved their lady ambassador. They made me feel guilty enough that I told Josie she could dress me.

I didn’t feel so guilty, however, not to include a list of stipulations for my attire and by the time she finished reading the list, I thought maybe my reward for her understanding was more punishment than either of us deserved.

“I shall take these under consideration, Inquisitor,” Josie had promised with her unfailing politeness.

And she had. My day dress had been something close to what I would have picked out for myself.  I peeled out of the soft grey fabric and my wet underthings, and hung them all near the fireplace to dry.

I reached for a tendril of my magic, letting my body warm to a low smolder that dried my hair and skin and burned off a little of the extra fire Cullen had stirred within me. My skin cooled somewhat. We were doing alright, I thought. Taking things slow, being careful. I was…centered, I told myself, believing it.

I stepped into the dressing room and immediately lost that center. I stared at the gown that hung from a hook on the outside of my wardrobe and groaned. I had underestimated Josephine Montilyet. I would not make the mistake again.

It wasn’t that bad. The dress was in an old Free Marcher style. Something I remembered seeing in my childhood books of fairy tales. There were two layers. A long under dress of silvery grey silk, with a long-sleeved outer cotte that laced over it. The over-dress was linen and split high on each side, the ridiculously long, flowing sleeves were slashed to fall away from my arms. There was embroidery around the neckline of the over-dress, and when I realized that a fine hand had worked silver mabari into the cobalt linen, I forgave Josie everything.

I stared into the mirror warily. The woman who gazed back looked younger than I remembered. Her eyes were too wide, but her breathing was steady. She displayed none of the wildness I feared.

“You’re fine,” I said, and for a moment it was as if my reflection had given the encouraging words to me. “He is safe with you. You’re safe with him.”

“Es?”

I turned guiltily from the mirror.  I didn’t think about the fact that I was standing naked in my dressing room, but seeing Cullen in the doorway, his wet clothes clinging to every plane and angle of his body…well that was impossible to ignore. I had taken two steps toward him before I caught myself, my hands reaching greedily for him.

I dropped them quickly, an apology already on my lips. His smile was delicate, a fledgling thing, but he shook his head at my retreat.

“You can have as much of me as you want,” he said quietly, then amended. “As much as you can at least.”

We had spent many nights discussing the shadows that haunted our pasts, and there had been just as many spent discussing strategies for moving beyond them. What boundaries we each needed. What we wanted. I was having a difficult time remembering them. My hands trembled, and I quickly folded my arms, tucking my traitorous fingers beneath them. Cullen’s eyes tracked my every movement, sweeping over my breasts without apology.

“I want to touch you,” I said roughly, the assertion a challenge.

“Then touch me,” he entreated.

It wasn’t that simple, but I knew how much we wanted it to be, even if only for a few moments. I closed the distance between us too quickly, my chest smacking into his. Cullen caught me, but his hands weren’t as careful as they had been. They gripped my hips, holding me tightly against him. Our hearts beat, once then twice against each other.

“Is this alright?” he asked, voice a low rumble.

I nodded. “Better to ask forgiveness this time,” I said. “Not permission.”

And then I stretched up on my toes and licked his lips. His eyes brightened, honey warmed by summer sun, and his fingers bit into my skin. I groaned against his mouth, wrapped my arms around him and tugged the hem of his wet shirt from the back of his breeches. The contrast of sensations sundered my thoughts.  My hand wandered beneath damp cotton, fingers splaying across taut muscle and cool, smooth skin. He bore more scars than I did; I learned them as I sucked his tongue into my mouth.

The bed, I thought, as his hands skimmed up my back spreading fires with the cool, rough pads of his fingertips. It was too far away. Five steps? Surely we could make five steps. I used my body to push him out of the doorway and back toward the bed. His legs hit the edge of the mattress and he sat down so abruptly that we laughed into our kiss, teeth clanking.

I pushed him back a little, climbing onto the bed so that I straddled his legs. I heard his breath hitch and paused, body thrumming as I waited for him to call a stop.

“Look at me,” he ordered softly.

I hadn’t realized that my eyes were closed. I dragged heavy lids up, and the reverence on his face stole my breath.

“How far is too far?” I asked, sliding down so that our bodies aligned too perfectly.

We both groaned, and he pushed back against me, cool and hard and denied to me only by two thin layers of cloth. He placed a biting kiss on my neck, lips and teeth traveling down to my breasts with a thin layer of restraint that I wanted to stretch past reason.  Cullen’s hands tangled in my hair as our lips sought each other again. All I could think of was getting him out of his wet clothes and into me. I needed his blighted shirt off. Now. I broke the kiss, pulled the cotton over his head, scattering water from his curls.

Our chests touched, skin finally to skin, and I groaned, trailing kisses down his neck, nipping at the beautiful slashes of his collarbones, all the while our hips shifted, bodies yearning. I wanted things from him that I couldn’t have. Not yet. Reason nagged at my passion-fogged brain, and I wondered what was the point of no return?

“There’s never a point of no return, Es,” he said with gentle severity.

“What?” I lifted my lips from his skin and stared down him. Had I said the words aloud?

“I want you,” he said, as if we both needed the confirmation. “But—“

He shrugged helplessly. “If neither of us can stop when the other needs us to, then we aren’t ready for each other.”

I smiled and bent to kiss him. A cooler peck. Gratitude and promise.

“We should probably stop,” I admitted grudgingly.

My body screamed at me, but I ignored it.

“Then we stop,” he said, sounding no calmer than I felt.

He shifted so that I fell onto the bed beside him. We lay there, hearts pounding, listening to the rain pattering against the windows, drumming on the roof. Cullen grabbed my hand, laced our fingers together.

“No new scars,” he said, reminding me of our promise to each other.

“No new scars,” I said struggling to catch my breath. “We already carry too many.”

He lifted my hand to his lips and placed a soft kiss there.

“Now, let’s go see this dress Josie got you.”


	8. A Slow Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drabble from tumblr. A slow kiss.

“Are you testing me?” The query slipped into the breath that hung between our lips, an almost gasp as Cullen drew back. “Or torturing me?”

Even without opening my eyes, I knew that he was smiling, a faint crinkle around tawny eyes, the barest lift to the right corner of his mouth. I could taste it in the air like sunshine, feel it teasing across my face just ahead of the whispering rasp of his cheek over mine. His nose nuzzled in just below my ear, brushed wordless promises in the warm above my skin.

“Testing,” he said, words hoarse like morning prayers.

I leaned forward, tried to close the scant distance between us, but his fingers tangled in my hair, hands closing like gentle cages around passion I couldn’t yet unleash.

“Always in such a hurry.” The teasing admonishment stroked over taut muscles and I bit my lip to stall the whimper that I may as well have given him.

“I’m the most patient person I know,” I declared, believing it as he tugged my head back, placed kisses that could have been mistaken as chaste had they not danced along the fading scar of my closest brush with a templar’s blade. I hummed once in frustration–in gratitude, in desperate want–and he placed the flat of his tongue against the back of the trembling sound. Rewarded me with a drag of his teeth and a gentle tug on the ends of my hair.

“You’re not,” he murmured into another taunting kiss.

“Cullen?”

“Es?”

I tugged against his gentle restraint, bit my lips lest I hurry through a moment I might miss once it was beyond us.

“I’m being patient,” I told him. Because it was very, very important that he know.

I was near enough to begging that Cullen chuckled. His nose drifted back, nuzzling soft as sunrise beneath by my chin, stretching my head farther back and I knew myself for the offering that he made. My body caught, tensed, lungs aching and hands trembling with longing until I could feel my heart beating in my wrists, my thumbs, blood yearning to press itself against his pulse.

“I want to touch you,” I muttered, frantic as the morning stretched wide and aching.

I wanted to seal my mouth over his, pull his breath into my lungs until the flames starved and guttered for lack of living air. Let them die, I thought. Let the fire fade until there was nothing but him and me and the long, slow storm of us.

“Not yet.”

His refusal only made me want him more, and he knew it.Testing. Always testing us both. His grin came back to mine, and he resumed his maddening hover. I was about to threaten him—with what I wasn’t yet certain, future retaliation probably—when he kissed me. A slow play of lips that had already memorized mine and were content to trace the familiar in faithful reminiscence.

“I hate you.” I forced the declaration out just before my knees began to quake. “And Cullen Rutherford, if you ever make me swoon again, I will never forgive you.”

He buried his face in my neck, laughed softly against my leaping pulse. “I will—I think—find some way to be content without absolution, your worship.”


	9. Dire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Formerly titled: Sins We Do Not Remember.
> 
> [Cullen x Essa. Angst. 997 words. Inspired by this quote from Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar (which is a wonderful series that everyone should read. for serious): 
> 
> “We pay for sins we do not remember, and seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god’s chosen.”

Skyhold’s chapel was dark. Moonlight stained the glass behind the altar; the night beyond the windows was a bruise of sky. It would be a flurry of white before the moons were high. Snow was coming. The heavy clouds were crowding in the north. Soon the moonlight would falter behind them. I had lit only two candles at the Bride’s feet. One for each of us. The statue’s hands were raised in benediction, but the form was too large, too imposing. Andraste stood too far above her petitioners and the grace she offered with open hands was just out of reach.

It wasn’t right, I thought angrily. I placed my hands on the marble, legs braced. The cool stone felt fragile beneath the heat of my fury. It wouldn’t take much, I thought, to crash the icon to the floor and scatter the Bride like rubble.  But it wasn’t Andraste I was angry with. It was that centuries of her teachings had been twisted for power and cruelty.

And I was tired of watching them destroy a good man.

The door burst open angrily, Cullen’s ire fortified by a howl of wind. I pulled my hands from the statue, wiping them on my bare legs as if to rid them of my guilt. I watched in flinty silence as Cullen closed the door more gently behind him. He leaned against the heavy wood, arms braced as if he had been followed and was preparing to battle an intruder.

“You ran from me,” he accused in disbelief.

Cullen didn’t turn to face me. His hands still pressed against the door, head bowed between his arms. He stared at his feet and I could hear the slow careful breaths that he took.

“And you thought that pursuing me was the best strategy?” I asked incredulously.

It hadn’t been our best moment. What had begun as a simple disagreement on theology had soon become an intensely personal divergence. Heated words had turned to uncharacteristic shouting and too characteristic stubbornness, until spite drove us to opposite sides of the bed.

“You. Ran. From. Me,” Cullen repeated, so slowly and deliberately that I knew he was even angrier than he had been when I left.

He turned to face me then, arms falling to his sides, eyes bright and predatory with carefully controlled rage.

“Are you afraid of me?” the query was dangerously soft.

I dragged a breath in through my nose. It was our first real fight, but with the darkness of the chapel stretching between us, it felt like our last.

“Are  _you_  afraid of  _me_?” I returned.

“Of course not,” he answered so quickly that I laughed.

“You’re either a liar,” I accused. “Or a fool then.”

“ _You_  ran from  _me_ ,” he said for a third time with careful emphasis. “Out into the snow, wearing nothing but my tunic.”

He, of course, had taken the time to dress completely. The sight of him in his armor infuriated me.

“I. have. a. temper,” I ground out.

I lifted my hands in a harsh parody of the statue behind me. Fire poured down like water, splashing on the stone beneath my bare feet.  Cullen’s eyes narrowed, and I knew the moment he reached for his former abilities. Even in the dim light, I saw the flush of shame darken his face when he caught the impulse. His hands tightened into fists at his sides.

“I have never seen you run from a fight, Essa.”

It took too much effort for the words to sound civil. I smiled at him coldly and dropped my hands. The fire vanished.

“You have,” I said.

He believed me, but he couldn’t remember. Such an unusual occurrence should have stood out in his mind, but today was not one of his better days.

“Remind me.”

The request was not quite a plea and one upon which we had long agreed. I would never use his occasional memory lapses against him. He would never chase me. We could pause any moment at any time with a single spoken word. I watched his mind catch up to his actions. He turned back to the door.

“Forgive me.”

All heat and anger were gone from him. His head hung and I wanted to rage anew.

“It was when Vivienne said that any child of mine would have to live in a Circle.”

The words tumbled out in a rush before he could open the door. I watched his back stiffen with remembered anger. I had run that day alright. It was that, or punch the enchanter in the face, and nothing good would have come from violence between us.

“I made you that angry?” he asked quietly.

“You did,” I replied.

So angry that I had feared my helplessness would consume us both.

“My faith,” he began in a practiced, even tone.

“Your faith,” I said, interrupting him. “Has raked your heart over too many coals.”

There were tears in my eyes. I shook my head.

“’We pay for sins we do not remember,’” I whispered. “’And seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god’s chosen.’”

They were lines from one of my favorite books. A heretical work, old and rare and outlawed long ago. Cullen frowned at me.

“We are all the Maker’s Chosen,” I told him. “And we blister on pyres of our own making.”

I had been watching him burn for so many months now, but who was I to insist he quench those flames while I still smoldered?

Cullen opened his mouth to speak, but I held up one hand. There was nothing else to be said.

“Dire.”

I whispered the word into shadows between us, calling a stop to all further discussion. He couldn’t ask why; I couldn’t slip one last dig in. The conversation was over the moment one of us used the escape signal. He had spoken the word twice now, but I never had. The word settled like a wall between us.


	10. Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [oh, I made so much lovely progress today that I was able to indulge in TWO amazing cups of coffee and approximately 1000 words of Essa and Cullen (from inside Essa’s head of course). I don’t think this is particularly angsty, but there is a little sad to it maybe. Drabble. First person. Essa and Cullen. Religion.]
> 
> PS. Dunno if it's just random tumblr chance, but this one seems to not be getting any love. If any of you see anything glaringly wrong with it, will you message me? I promise not to freak out over criticism. :)

I didn’t liked praying indoors. As a child, it was difficult enough for my parents to get me to services. By the time I reached adolescence my mother had given up and denounced me as a woeful pagan and left me to my sin. I tried not to judge her harshly for it. She was, like many, of small frightened mind. She clung to what passed for faith among her peers with a desperate trembling of superiority. One crack and it would all come crashing down around her.

I never had trouble believing in the Maker or understanding how Andraste could look upon her people and see how they might have fallen short of his grace. But no matter how beautiful the liturgy, how perfect the carvings, resplendent the glass, or rich and luxurious the fabrics, I stared around the Chantry and saw man’s will, not the Maker’s.

Despite the warning carefully tucked away in Leliana’s teasing, it wasn’t our differences as mage and Templar that gave me worry about my and Cullen’s relationship. It was our religious differences.  We shared the same god, and a reverence for the Chant, but I would never kneel in supplication, begging forgiveness for my unworthiness.

It broke my heart that he did. If his Maker could look down on how Cullen struggled every day to be a better man and still find him unworthy, then this was not a god who deserved my praise.

I struggled against rage as Cullen struggled against self-recriminations, pain, and doubt. I couldn’t take it from him, no matter how much I wanted to. For every moment of happiness he found with me, a dozen would follow where he floundered in guilt for daring to reach for some small shred of joy.

“So you do kneel to pray.”

I glanced up from my devotions amid the small bed of dawn-colored wildflowers that Josie and I had planted for Leliana in a corner of the garden. Cullen stood over me, not quite crowding into my and the flowers’ space. I could tell something was wearing on him a bit more than usual that morning. The tightness around his eyes would ordinarily have had me reaching for him with healing, but there was a hardness to his amber gaze that hinted at his need for conflict.

He hadn’t realized yet why he picked fights with me. He was so careful with others when his temper rode high on a crest of pain and frustration. But not with me. Me he poked at verbally until his wounds lay bare and angry and he could apologize earnestly for them. Sometimes I dragged him out to the practice yard and put swords and shields in our hands. It took him less time to count his steps when he thought he might physically hurt me.

As if bruises bothered me anything like watching him inflict such heartache on himself.

“I kneel,” I confirmed without rising.

His shadow fell across me as the sun finally crept above the battlements.

“In the dirt.”

I heard it then, beneath the scathing lay the fear that he would never be rid of the taint that clung to him.

I nodded. And some perverse defiance kept me on the ground rather than letting me leap to my feet for the challenge he needed.

“In the dirt,” I said softly. “Amid the flowers. Beneath the trees. And before my love.”

I stared down at my hands. I had told him what blood stained them, and just last night I had told him that I did not carry remorse for that blood. We were too rapidly approaching a path we could not walk together.  If he feared the light and the burden of forgiveness then he would lose me. I could not stay in the shadows with him. Not forever.

I clasped my fingers together in my lap to keep my yearning hands from reaching for him. Maker’s breath, I loved him, and if I could have sacrificed myself on that altar to save him from himself, I would have. I could feel the weight of his gaze heavy on the back of my neck. His fingertips brushed against the crown of my head, benediction tangled with rage.

I looked up slowly, giving him time to pull away. His hand hovered, a breath from my cheek, but he didn’t touch me. I didn’t know what he saw in my eyes, but I saw the power I held over him in my supplication. I smiled. That was the great lie, then, wasn’t it? That the petitioner knelt, broken and vulnerable beneath the Maker’s gaze.

No wonder I thought, breath catching in my throat as he looked back at me. No wonder I was so terrible at their prayers.

I did not need that place of power, that last grasp of control. I did not need my god to stand above me on a pedestal that I could easily destroy.

“Essa…” Cullen’s anger fled with startling quickness, I heard useless regret take its place.

Even as he began to kneel before me, I rose.

“No.” I caught his arms before his knees could crush the grace before him.  

“No more of that,” I ordered as gently as I could.

We stood in the garden as the sun rose, and I held his hands.

“You asked me once how I could bear the weight of my choice. I don’t. Every choice that I have made is because of who I am, and I decided long ago that I would be someone who could look the Maker in the face. To take what praise or punishment he saw fit. There is no safety there. No promise of forgiveness if only I’m sorry enough for my crimes. Kneeling rarely suits me, Cullen. There’s too much blighted arrogance in it. As if remorse could buy absolution. If you want to bare your soul to the Maker and be cleansed of what you carry, stand before him and forgive yourself.”

“Heretic,” he murmured when I had finished.

All that remained in his voice was affection. I smiled.

“Every damn day.”


	11. Michel de Chevin Recruited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a tumblr prompt: You're in trouble. Essa recruits Michel; she has to find an assignment for him in Skyhold.
> 
> Also, because ponies.

He walked with a horseman’s wide, steady gate, hips loose and rolling, center of gravity no longer within his own body, but somewhere between him and his courser’s thundering hooves. His hands were rough from weapon and stable work, but gentle on leads and reins. He had never needed to constantly assert his presence. He spoke with the quiet timbre of a man who rarely raised his voice, the smooth rise and fall a truer song of kinship than accent or dialect. There are two ways a man might speak to a horse. Michel did not command.

He trusted.

Michel leaned easily on the third rung of the round pen’s rails, his arms stretched before him, hands in loose fists as he watched Cullen’s Folly prance up to him. The filly was already twice as arrogant as I had ever thought to be, and it was a bit of a blessing I thought, that I’d refused her. Strong females could make a powerful match on the battlefield, if they didn’t kill each other before they got there. Folly and I still clashed occasionally, and she wouldn’t be ready for even a light saddle for another year.

She snorted in challenge as she drew near Michel. Her dark, honeyed eyes were wide and wary as she tipped her head to the side and stretched her nose out, pink nostrils flaring as Michel opened his broad hands to gently accept her inquiry.

I watched his fingers move like silent prayers beneath her fair chin. Folly snorted softly in approval and I didn’t try to hide my echoing sigh.

“You too?” Cullen asked, joining me in my watch.

His hand pressed against the small of my back and I shifted from the stable wall to lean companionably against his side.

“Oh, yes,” I said, nodding toward the pair in the yard. “I think I’m more smitten than Folly is.”

Cullen chuckled. “At least one of you is loyal,” he teased.

The jest was easy and uncomplicated, without a single dark layer. I held it close for a moment, marveling at its wonder. We watched as Folly lipped a treat from Michel’s palm.

“For now,” I amended.

Cullen and I laughed as the foal’s eyes closed in bliss. Michel scratched her ear as she ate, and Folly leaned into the affection, upper lip rising before she caught the indignity. She snatched her head away and glared, ears pinned back in embarrassment before trotting off. Her snort of derision echoed brightly in the morning sun.

“You and Dennet are sure about this?” Cullen asked.

Michel turned placed his back to the pen, and continued his casual lean. I watched Folly dance, her posture arrogant and hopeful as she considered returning. I smiled and Michel’s blue eyes found us across the yard. I thought that the slight smile that curved his lips was genuine.

“We need knights,” I told Cullen. “Horses trained for war.”

“We do,” he agreed.

The many and vast differences between a warhorse and horse ridden to war had nearly cost Geri his life, and had already lost me a precious friend. 

“There are few I would trust more with my horses.”

“Alright then, let’s go make him an offer.” He feigned a heavy sigh. “If he stays, are you going to moon around the valley all summer?”

I grinned. “I moon around the valley already,” I reminded him.

Of all my accomplishments since joining the Inquisition, Smoke’s Valley was the one for which I held the most pride. It was unlikely that Skyhold would ever be completely self-sufficient, but I was striving for it.

“Well, Ser Michel gets his own stall,” he said drily. “He can’t share yours.”

Behind us, Geri snorted in agreement. 


	12. Focus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essa's magic makes passion a precarious territory to navigate. She and Cullen do their best and it's generally pretty sweet.

Each time was a surge and I thought I would drown in us both, but the Fade couldn’t reach me behind the barrier of us. There was no flame, no magic beyond every sighing truth, and if my body floundered in desire it also anchored to him in the tempest.

I was not consumed.

I never knew my hands could be so gentle. They spread warmth like the first kiss of summer upon the mountains, rough callouses skimming over smooth, silvery scars and drawing life from fallow planes. We hadn’t yet exchanged the stories of all the marks life had left behind. I hoped we would, one day, but for now the past lay only in the words between us. Our flesh was still a destiny not quite manifest.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he whispered.

The reminder was husky, his voice languid with the ebb of passion. I glanced up the long line of his body, saw the twin crescents of his lashes curving golden against high cheekbones. I pressed a smile to skin only slightly cooler than my own.

“Don’t worry,” I promised, blowing a warm breath against his leaping pulse. “I am remarkably focused.”

His hands tightened in my hair and then they were gone, slapped to the bed on either side of his hips.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I admitted on a shaky laugh. “I think I rather enjoyed it.”

“Really?”

He sat up then, putting inconvenient distance between us. I made a small noise of disapproval and crawled toward him.

“I was—“

“I know,” he said softly, catching my face in his hands and leading me up his body until we were flush against one another. “And trust me, I won’t stop you again, but this…”

His hands slid into my hair, fingers twining gently in tangles we had made earlier. “This is something we should explore now.”

Cullen placed a kiss on my throat, tongue sweeping over the soft moan that rattled the cage around my voice. His teeth scraped lightly and he tugged on my hair, gently dragging my head back and pulling my neck taut. His jaw rasped against skin still sensitive and thin over the rush of my every thundering heartbeat. He nuzzled the line of my jaw, breath whispering against a spot I never would have guessed would so appreciate the attention.

“Still alright?” he murmured.

My whole body flinched as his question thrummed through me.

I nodded emphatically enough to be amusing, but the motion pulled my hair more tightly in his grasp and my affirmation rode the edge of a groan. Cullen shifted us then, muscles flexing as he pushed me upright. The slide of his body followed closely until we knelt, our bodies pressed against one another. He tugged on my hair, and my torso bowed back as he curved over me. I stared up through the fading light and found his smile.

“Yes?” he asked again.

My eyelids were heavy, but I fought to keep them open, and oh, how I was rewarded for my efforts. Cullen studied my face with the same intensity I had watched him survey the war map. His eyes were warm and amber, the hottest part of the flame before it falters. I shook my head against the sudden image, bright bursts of almost-pain grounding me in the world we were building between us.

“Yes.”

He lowered his lips to mine slowly, mouth hovering maddeningly just out of reach as he gauged every stumble of my pulse. Every sigh from my lips. I tried to push toward him, but he held fast, the pads of his fingers pressing into my scalp. I frowned in frustration and the left side of his mouth hitched up in that smirk I adored.

“Cullen…”

I intended to sound menacing, but his smirk only broadened.

“Essa.”

There was laughter behind the longing in his voice.

I grinned helplessly. “Would you hurry up and kiss me, please?”

“As you wish.”


End file.
